71–80 of 138 posts
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Same with guitar players and fingerboard oils. Use mineral oil because it's food-safe and won't go rancid. Same reason I use it on my cutting board.
Wait a moment. Mineral oils are food-safe? Don't they accumulate in the body and act as endocrine disruptors?
This does not jibe with my experiences or anybody I know's experiences, I think it needs more development. I've had friends who used vegetable oils then they dried out or worse turned rancid and gummed stuff up. Especially bad if a tool is left for a while, or in a hot place, though I guess this is not so much a problem in Europe. This doesn't seem like a significant enough problem to justify that anyway, "thousands…
Indeed, gas engines probably drip or exhaust more oil. Certainly 2 stroke chainsaws. There's a rumor among cyclists that "3 in 1 oil" is bad for bikes because it contains vegetable oil that gums up. But cyclists will debate about oil for days.
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It’s true that literally everything on Earth is natural by definition, either naturally-occurring or produced by natural forces like erosion or beavers or humans. But that’s tautological, and not interesting. Refined petroleum does not occur naturally and is toxic to all life. Vegetable oils are produced by stepping on or chewing nuts or vegetables. There is no comparison.
> Refined petroleum does not occur naturally and is toxic to all life. Not all life[1]. [1] https://iscsales.com/item/55-gallon-oil-eating-microbes-lfs-...
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Indeed, gas engines probably drip or exhaust more oil. Certainly 2 stroke chainsaws. There's a rumor among cyclists that "3 in 1 oil" is bad for bikes because it contains vegetable oil that gums up. But cyclists will debate about oil for days.
Cyclists debate about oil for days. Cycle mechanics just use WD40.
Clean and smooth. I rewax every week (200km), takes me 10 min in total, also a a convenient way to inspect and adjust my whole drivetrain, regularly.
Tangentially related: Boston Dynamics' BigDog, which utilizes hydraulic actuators, would constantly leak hydraulic fluid while operating, be it through normal weepage or catastrophic leaks (e.g. burst hoses). Initially, they used petroleum-based hydraulic fluid, but as they began to operate out in the woods etc, this proved to be untenable, so they eventually switched to using a vegetable-based hydraulic fluid that w…
Tangentially related, in the early 00’s in a datacenter belonging to a large multinational corporation, there was an IBM as/400 that frequently leaked puddles of yellow liquid. A puddle was found under it; the puddle was cleaned up. The puddle came back. Repeatedly. The data center management was perplexed. The internal as/400 professionals were stumped. IBM techs were called in. They assured the datacenter’s managem…
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This surprises me; vegetable oil gets sticky as it oxidizes. I would have expected something like mineral oil.
Some vegetable oil oxidizes much faster than some other. Sunflower oil oxidizes rather quickly, olive oil I haven't noticed oxidizing yet.
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This surprises me; vegetable oil gets sticky as it oxidizes. I would have expected something like mineral oil.
Some vegetable oil oxidizes much faster than some other. Sunflower oil oxidizes rather quickly, olive oil I haven't noticed oxidizing yet.
I started using it because I ran out if cutting fluid, and noticed no difference.
(It seems like I'm always being told to use this oil, or cleaner, when I'm working on a project. Before paying for the brand name, I always look up the MSDS on the product. Many products can be made at home with experimenting.)
Also, really dumb fact: you can make gallons of your own sexual lubricant for pennies. Just mix a teaspoon of xantham gum with a pint of water (and if you want to preserve the whole batch, 10 drops of grapefruit seed extract). The stuff you buy in stores is about 100x more expensive and contains potentially-harmful additives.
This does not jibe with my experiences or anybody I know's experiences, I think it needs more development. I've had friends who used vegetable oils then they dried out or worse turned rancid and gummed stuff up. Especially bad if a tool is left for a while, or in a hot place, though I guess this is not so much a problem in Europe. This doesn't seem like a significant enough problem to justify that anyway, "thousands…
When you say they used "vegetable oils", do you mean they used a vegetable oil bought from the grocery store, or that they used one of the blended biodegradable oils specifically made for chainsaws? I've used both the Stihl Bioplus ( https://www.stihlusa.com/products/oils--lubricants-and-fuels... ) and Husqvarna XGuard ( https://www.baileysonline.com/husqvarna-x-guard-bar-chain-oi... ) for a couple years now, and hav…
There is still an ongoing debate on whether these are good enough etc. On one hand, some people swear by them, and non-toxicity is especially nice when it's going to be heated rapidly right next to your face. On the other hand, there are certainly quite a few recorded cases of things gummied up when stored long term. It appears that the additives do help quite a bit, but it's still a failure mode to consider, unlike synthetic oils.
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By “significant” I take you to mean, “causing enough harm to be noticeable.” I don’t know the answer to that. Consider that chainsaws are only one of many polluting tools that people use in forests, e.g., snowmobiles, generators, of course cars. There are many non-petroleum pollutants as well, like lead ammunition and trash. I believe it’s a useful practice to reduce harm from each of these as much as possible. That…
A key piece of advice in performance optimization is to profile first. The same should apply to environmentalism. Some interventions have orders of magnitude more impact than others, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise
In this case, we have two lubricants that are apparently interchangeable. One we know has potential downsides (petroleum based oils are known to be harmful to the ground when spilled; this is part of why we have laws against doing so); one does not. Pick the one that doesn't, since all else is effectively equal.